The End of the World As We Know It

There are times in this job that we can’t even begin to respond to news items. It’s been nearly two hours since we first saw this and we’re just now picking ourselves up off the floor. The involuntary twitching is settling down, and the puddle of drool is drying.

Rush & Molloy in the Daily News. An earth-shattering rumor. Perhaps aimed at disspelling the idea that Lloyd Grove might come back to the Reliable Source. Perhaps meant merely to send shudders through the L Street newsroom. Perhaps meant just to make Nick Denton giggle hysterically while Ben Bradlee collapses in a sobbing heap as he imagines his baby–his magnum opus of a news organization, his journalistic masterpiece–imploding in a spray of anal sex jokes and awkward innuendos. Perhaps it’s meant as some sort of cruel day-before-April Fool’s day prank.

Whatever the reason, prepare to avert your eyes and cover your kids’ ears. This item is about as non-work-safe as it gets:

Are the Washington Post’s editors brave (or crazy) enough to turn their “Reliable Source” gossip column over to the saucy blogger known as Wonkette? Ana Marie Cox has proclaimed that her strength is humor, not reporting. But we hear she’s more than curious about the job that columnist Richard Leiby is vacating. The expletive-loving gadfly made it her business to be in NYC Tuesday for the party celebrating The Post’s acquisition of Slate.com. But Post publisher Donald Graham appeared to slip out before she could lob a charm grenade at him.